Such a system would require careful and intelligent design
Kress and van Leeuwen (1996) draw attention to the ‘meaning’ often ascribed to geometrical shapes. Citing Dondis (1973) they note that the square may represent ‘honesty, straightness and workmanlike meaning’ while for Thompson and Davenport (1982) it represents ‘the world and denotes order’. Circles, however, represent ‘endlessness, warmth, protection’ (Dondis, 1973). In summarising such distinctions in semiosis, Kress and van Leeuwen point to a fundamental distinction between symbols that represent the technological world and those that represent the world of nature, the former principally involving straight lines, the latter curved ones (1996: 53).
Liungman (1995) adds into his classification the consideration of whether symbols have a single or multiple axes and whether they are open or closed. An informal analysis by the present writer of the 600 symbols in Liungman’s book would seem to show that straight lines are associated with at least the following: Strength, power, firmness, support, ground, reason, joining, inflexibility, insistence, protection, measure, masculinity, angularity, awkwardness, dominance, hardness, and order. Curved lines seem to be associated with at least the following: Softness, flexibility, flow, smoothness, accommodation, liquid, femininity, receiving, integration, hollowness, comfort, gradualness, involvement, beauty, these are extreme generalisations, and there any many further categories and many exceptions. Nevertheless, just as there are semantic primes which would require expression through a symbolic system, so there may be visual primes which could be used to express semantic primes and combinations thereof. The limitations of a real character have been adequately set out by Salmon (1972, 1988), Slaughter (1982) Subbiondo (1992), Maat (2004) and Lewis (2007), and the three principal barriers being classification, ineffability and difficulty of learning. That one cannot say everything in such a character, however, is no barrier to saying something.
Sufficient studies have been carried out into lexical frequency in many languages to make it possible to decide on a prioritisation of symbols to be created through combining semantic and visual primes in such a way that essential common notions could be expressed and understood. The learning of new lexis is essential both for the limited goal of passing examinations and for the real purposes of becoming a true speaker of an L2. Given the low base from which students in English schools work (GCSE with some 1600 words and expressions) it is essential to find ways of scaffolding by which they learn a far greater amount of L2 vocabulary without constant recourse to dictionaries. If a symbolic system can be devised which gives a key to meaning and which may be learned before the undertaking of an intermediate course in the L2, then learners may be given a form of Vygotskyan scaffolding which requires thinking skills enabling them to arrive at meaning. Such a system would require careful and intelligent design, but the results would justify the effort.
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